King Professor Santis had warned me that I may develop a few ‘flu-like’ symptoms on the new medication and that I should gradually increase my dosage each day to avoid any adverse reactions*. So I popped them alongside my trusty Tramadol. (At this point I had a steady habit of 8 Trams a day and all was going well – I hadn’t started to pickpocket children or search through bins, or any of the other tricky habits you pick up along with long-term drug addiction.)

Day 1. In an effort to outsmart the Drug Dread, I took it before bed so I could blissfully sleep through the sicky-bit. I was a little shocked when I woke in the middle of the night like Regan in the Exorcist… you know, dry throat, green face, demonically possessed. The bed shook, I spoke in tongues, the words ‘Help Me’ carved into my stomach… (ok, that may not be entirely true, but I did feel really out of sorts.) Luke renounced the devil with a camomile tea and I hoped that the worst was over.

Day 2. The worst wasn’t over. Now, I pride myself in being highly accomplished in the art of ‘pulling off a hangover’. I’m accustomed to brushing myself down after three hours sleep, painting on my face and skipping into work with the joy of Spring, despite being considerably weighed down by concealer and two bottles of chardonnay. I was in shock that one little pill, a fraction of the size of a bottle of wine, could cause so much distress! My head pounded, my eyes stung, I didn’t even want to eat Pizza! NOT EVEN PIZZA!

Day 3. Eve and Faye popped in. We had a three-way foot-rub and watched a bad film. When they left I cried for two hours because they’d been so nice to me. After two hours I’d forgotten why I was crying but didn’t know how to make it stop, so I cried for two more. I was acutely aware of Luke watching me in the same way you watch a moth bash relentlessly against a window, considering how best to put it out of its misery. I asked him to sit in another room in case he tried to squash me with newspaper and flush me down the loo. And then I cried because all I wanted most in the whole world, was to be flushed down the loo. I cried until my head ran out of tears. Oh if only I was a moth.

Day 4. You know that scene in Cast Away when poor emaciated Tom Hanks is crawling around in his loin cloth, chatting insanely to Wilson his volleyball?… Well, that.

Day 5. I dragged myself into London Bridge Hospital for an appointment with the King. On bended knee I begged for his mercy. He scoffed that I should come off the pills immediately (as though I had foolishly prescribed them for myself) and I live to blog another day. Yay!

King Santis mused over my latest test results. “I’d like to refer you to my colleague at the London Lupus Centre.”Oh arses. Lupus? What the hell is Lupus anyway? (aside from a character in Harry Potter?!**) Lupus sounds ridiculous and it most certainly doesn’t sound like anything I want. So you can stick your Lupus, Prof Santis! Laters Lupus! Sayonara Santis!… And what time is my appointment? 

* I know it would be handy for me to tell you the name of the Drug Dread, so that you could avoid it or surreptitiously hide it in the crumpets of your worst enemy – but I immediately threw them away, in case their mere presence should infect my flat with its curse, or I should mistake it for a tic-tac and find myself crying into the washing machine again. Soz.

** I’ve since googled this and I don’t think Lupus is a character in Harry Potter after all, although FYI JK, you missed a trick there, Lucian Lupus would have made a great arch enemy.

Eve, Faye and loads of lady limbs.

I was released from hospital with Pleurisy. It wasn’t like a ‘take-home’ present in a party bag; ‘look mum I got a yoyo, a whistle shaped like a burger, a kinder egg, pleurisy and six scratch and sniff stickers!’ I had come to hospital with the pleurisy, they just needed to tell me that I had it so I could go home again. And if you’re wondering what that feels like…it’s like one hundred angry witches (because they’ve got really long fingernails) scratching away inside your chest every time you breath. And, when they fancy it (those miserable witches) they dig their nails all the way in like daggers (whilst cackling, probably). And Flip-Jack-Wilson does it hurt!

So cradling my boobs in my arms, (because they too were getting a rough deal by hanging around on top of the witches, I mean, pleurisy), I headed back home. Now ‘home’ is officially in London, but I’ve realised that even at 34 the only home you need when you’re sick, is the one your mum and dad are in.

Mum whisked me to my room where she had a pair of emergency slippers on standby. Unfortunately the only PJs available were circa 2001 when I was considerably slimmer and the PJs matched my pink hair. God I was sophisticated! So I bundled into bed in a lumo-pink winceyette straight jacket and didn’t get out again for a very long time.

Doctor Dudley and Nurse Betty popped by every now and again to crawl under the covers and lick my toes (they’re the dogs, not my parents). Mum cancelled everything to lie beside me with her iPad, reading her emails out loud like a bed-time story, (except there’s nothing dreamy about spam from Prince Hanzah of Azerbaijan who’d lost his wallet and needed $5000 in his bank, pronto!) Dad would knock on my door, asking ‘are you decent?’ just in case my bottom had accidentally snuck out of the ill-fitting PJs and displayed itself on top of the duvet. He’d bring hourly tea and hot water bottles, and tell my mum to stop reading her emails to me. My wonderful sister would swing by to fill me with PMA and confidence that I was in the right place whilst my phone beeped away with well-wishes. Basically folks, if you want gifts, loads of gifts, get sick! In fact, John Lewis should do Sick-Lists (like a wedding list, but with less crockery and more grapes.) There’s your next ad John Lewis! You’re welcome.

My boyfriend arrived every weekend to tell me what a mess London was in, and to ask me to stroke his head (because I hadn’t been there all week to do it!) Poor boy had started a new job and it pained me so much to be absent from such an important time. But I had been absent, from everything. Everything! My job that I adore, my colleagues, my friends, their dinner parties, their pop up shops, their birthday bashes; summer bbq’s, uni reunions; book clubs, supper clubs, all the pubs…

Sorry, that bit was a bit too maudlin and not very funny. Because it wasn’t. And even when the dog fell off the bed, I still didn’t really laugh. That was the hardest part of it all, feeling too poorly to laugh and missing out on ALL the fun. So I went back to the doctor’s, because three weeks later, I was feeling worse than I had ever before. Another call to the hospital was made, but at least this time I knew my way to the EAU.

Ten million blood tests later, three doctors gathered to tell me that perhaps it wasn’t Pleurisy after all…. at which point I’m sure I heard an angry witch inside me, laugh.

             Doctor Dudley and Nurse Betty